How To Get More Patients For Your Chiropractor Practice

By the end of this article you will know exactly how to get more chiropractic patients for your practice

Top 10 List Of Chiropractic Patient Getting Methods

Here are all the known ways to fill your practice

1. Advertise (Facebook is by far the best way right now, but there are many other forms of advertising)
2. Social Media (if you’re not constantly in front of your prospective patients’ noses, your social media savvy competitors will get all the attention)
3. Organic Search (If you haven’t got a website yet – or your website hasn’t been updated in years, you need to take action fast – things are changing and your competitors are getting more savvy)
4. Word of Mouth (this is the most common method, but only works once you’re well established – but read on anyway, because there’s a way to increase its effectiveness)
5. Network Meetings (these are fine, but take a long time to establish trust)
6. Good Location (with a good location in a town, you have ‘free’ advertising, what’s not to like except the cost of those premises)
7. Professional Referrals (these come from professional Chiropractic bodies, business directories, the medical profession and insurance companies)
8. Workshops, seminars, lectures and retreats (a lot of work, but can result in long term clients – and excellent for your professional status and positioning in the industry)
9. Point of Sale merchandise (not just the obvious like brochures and patient help sheets, but also mugs, key rings, pens and other merchandise your patients will appreciate)
10. Specialise (like all professional services, being known as the expert in a specific area will get you more attention, making sure your industry colleagues are aware of what you do, will help increase referrals)

Advertising Your Chiropractic Practice

There are thousands of books on advertising and probably millions of articles online and in journals, magazines and newspapers, but no one has time to plough through all that, so let’s keep it really simple.

The 3 top advertising methods you should be paying attention to are:

1. Facebook ads (the fastest and most cost effective way to find prospects)
2. Local newspaper ads (don’t spend much, but keep them rolling for 6 months to gain traction and awareness)
3. Google Adwords (still very expensive, but if you make it local and your competition are not doing it, you could get a quick return on your investment – worth an experiment)

It’s worth pointing out that successful practices have marketing plans and budgets set aside for advertising. If you’re not doing it and finding it hard to get new patients, it’s probably because your chiropractic competitors and colleagues are beating you out with better plans.

Facebook Ads

The golden rule is to go local. Target your town and keep expanding the radius around it until you get a decent number of prospective patients showing up in Facebook’s Ad Manager interface (Facebook will let you know how many you need).

Setting the interests and behaviours of your prospective patients is the tricky part. You need to know exactly who you’re targeting if you want this to be a success. It’s quite an art and depends on what’s happening in your town and surrounding areas.

As an example, you may want to target local fitness groups or organisations. To find more potential prospects, use Facebook’s search facility and start by typing in common words your patients use when they come to you for help.

Set a low budget to start with and leave your ad running for at least 3 days to give Facebook a chance to find the right people.

Local Newspaper Ads

Advertising in the classified section of your local newspaper is always a good way to get noticed. Just bear in mind it will take time for people to become familiar with your services.

I would book a 6 month series and change the advert every month or couple of weeks, but make sure your branding remains constant, as we want to people to start identifying us with ease. A strong logo and business name will help here.

Rather than pushing the Chiropractor element, you should push the sort of problems you fix. Eg. “Struggling with back pain? We can help.”.

Google Adwords

This is a minefield right now. Each click could cost you a double figure sum depending on which keywords you’re going after (and Google doesn’t differentiate between a click from a prospective patient or a competitor wanting to see what you’re up to either!).

So you need to find a selection of keywords that are very specific to a particular chiro problem you help fix. If no one else is bidding on that term, you can get clicks for as low as 5p each.

There’s also an option called Adwords Express from Google, which makes the whole process quicker to set up – but be very careful about the automatic keywords Google will add on your behalf. You will need to check your account daily and delete the ones you don’t want.

Social Media For Chiropractors

This is a huge area, but absolutely vital as the whole world moves online. And remember, it’s not just moving online, it’s all moving towards mobile platforms too.